(In memory of my father, brothers and sisters,
even the ones I never knew)
The dead are all around us.
We don't see them,
they don't see us.
Touching how a memory
can make contact
without touching;
how the seed of a virgin
orchid rooted on a mango
limb could bring you face
to face with long buried
memories of a father who first
showed you gentleness
in the savage
nature,
beauty in a wild
orchid uprooted
and transplanted
to a front yard garden
from the precipice
of a flowering rock.
©2013 by
G.
Newton V. Chance
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older
than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
by Langston Hughes
the poet writes the poem;
the reader gives it life
(© G. Newton V. Chance)
Make somebody happy (© Alexander Ligertwood & Carlos Santana)
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